Modern Day Nomads

The Stanley Hotel (Aka The Shining Hotel) July 2016

OMG…we can’t seem to get out of the state of Colorado, we enjoy it so much. We took a ride to Estes Park where The Stanley Hotel, a 420-room Colonial Revival hotel is located. Approximately five miles from the entrance to Rocky Mountain National Park, the Stanley offers panoramic views of Lake Estes, the Rockies and especially Long’s Peak. It was built by Freelan Oscar Stanley of Stanley Steamer fame and opened on July 4, 1909, catering to the American upper class at the turn of the century. The hotel and its surrounding structures are listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The Stanley Hotel also hosted the horror novelist Stephen King, serving as inspiration for the Overlook Hotel in his 1977 bestseller The Shining and location for the 1997 miniseries. Today, it includes a restaurant, spa, and bed-and-breakfast and provides guided tours which feature the history and alleged paranormal activity of the site. (From Wikipedia). The story of the Stanley brothers is one worth reading. The hotel has a number of rooms open to the public to stay and for business and wedding functions. I’d love to stay there but probably wouldn’t get much sleep.

Staircase to the bedrooms.Hallway to room 217.Room 217 where the most notorious paranormal activity took place. This is also the room that was the inspiration for Stephen Kings novel “The Shining”. It’s also the room Jim Carey stayed in while filming “Dumb and Dumber. He stayed about two hours before running out of the hotel like a crazy person. He moved to another hotel.I took this selfie and nothing appeared in the mirror except me.Eileen took this selfie and she is NOT in the picture and there appears to be a wedding dress in the hallway. Same mirror. Spooky! The hotel guide requested it to be forwarded to her.

Basement where the staff worked. The guests never saw the staff. They traveled back and forth in these tunnels.

Ha ha if you spook easy, then this place will get to you. There were a couple of kids in our group and the guide had them run down to the end of the hall and they disappeared and reappeared just like in the movie. What most people don’t know is Stephen King did not like Kubrick’s interpretation of his book, so he shot his own mini series for ABC. “The Shining” mini series ran on ABC in 1997.